We’re a new team here at Microsoft, and if you’re reading this then we’ve accomplished our first goal—reaching out to you.

 

The Education Labs team was created to incubate new technology that contributes to the advancement of education.  We collect ideas, build working prototypes of the most promising concepts, and then share them with you to hear what you think.

Even though we're a relatively new team, we're actually part of a larger group that has been around for quite a long time at Microsoft -- the Education Products Group.  That group has a long history of being involved in the education area, with a rich history of products over the years.  So, we have a unique opportunity to get our latest thinking out to real users, and to work closely with the core product teams as they map out their future plans.

 

We already have a handful of projects in the Education Labs pipeline, thanks to our user research team. They’ve been studying how teachers and students use technology in the classroom, in particular around how Microsoft's products and technologies can be useful.  Along the way they’ve collected some great ideas from those studies. Of course, as word of our new team has spread throughout Microsoft, we’re finding that folks from all over the company also have ideas to share. Just goes to show that education is important to everyone everywhere.

 

But our main focus is you—we’d love to hear your ideas! Take a look at what we’ve got so far and send us your comments.

 

This site itself is a concept test. Over time, we’ll make changes as we experiment with better ways of communicating with you. For now, please share your ideas and feedback on our blog or discussion board.

 

The prototypes offered on our site are not products or even beta versions. In most cases there’s no intent to turn them into fully fledged Microsoft products—okay, maybe the best ones will make the cut. But really they’re simply here to generate feedback so we can learn about what you find valuable. Because of that, all these prototypes are strictly ‘use at your own risk’. We can’t promise to fix every problem that is reported, but we’ll definitely try to fix the worst ones.

 

Check this blog for updates from us on our work and behind-the-scenes stories about the various projects we’re involved with or subscribe to our RSS feed for automatic updates. Please join the discussion—we want to hear from you!

 

Want to hear more about how the team came about?  Check out this video we shot of Kate Mulcahy, who is our first Program Manager on the team.

 

 

(MP4 version is here)